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Chronology of Islam in America (2011)
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
February 2012 Page Two
Muslim families turn to home-schooling
Feb 21: Cilia Ndiaye vividly remembers her parents’ worries that she was suffering in public school because of her Muslim faith. Fellow students, she said, would mock her and tear off her hijab, the head scarf worn for modesty. “We were called Nazis,” she says. Her parents’ solution — to home-school their daughter — was a radical step in 1987, but one that a rising number of Muslim-Americans are embracing today, shaking off the stigma that taking their children out of the public school system would increase the community’s isolation and cultural distance from the American mainstream. “It was considered irresponsible and stupid” in 1987, Ms. Ndiaye said, but the experience was so positive for her that the Maryland woman now home-schools her own six children, who range in age from 1½ to 12. A minority within a minority, Ms. Ndiaye said the number of Muslim home-schoolers is growing, as are the support networks, conferences and faith-oriented curriculum to support the community.
In its most recent statistics, the Department of Education put the number of home-schooled elementary and high school students in 2007 at about 1.5 million. Brian D. Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute estimates that Christian students, Protestant and Roman Catholic, make up the vast majority of all home-schooled children, while the research-based data on Muslim home-schoolers amounts to “slim to none.” But he said the anecdotal evidence within the home-schooling community suggests that the stigmas of the mid-1980s for Muslim home-schoolers no longer apply. “Discussion with home-school leaders across the nation indicates that the number of Muslims in home-schooling is expanding relatively quickly, compared with other groups,” said Ray who speculated that part of the rise could be attributed to the growth — and increased confidence — of the American Muslim population in general.
Some still worry that the increasing numbers of Muslim home-schoolers — an option that a number of families who recently emigrated to the United States have chosen — is a double-edged phenomenon for a community that faces questions and challenges about fitting in with American life and culture. Dr. Faheem Younus, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, said home-schooling for first-generation immigrants often impedes their assimilation into American society. Parents often are hesitant to send their children to public schools, where teachings can run contrary to Islamic belief. He said deciding to home-school often comes down to how to instill “family values.” “If you are trying to shield your child from society, good luck,” he said. [The Washington Times]
FBI infiltrates Iowa mosques
Feb 22: A sense of betrayal has hung over the Islamic Center of Des Moines since members learned the man they knew as Rafik Alvi was there neither to worship nor even Muslim. He was Arvinder Singh, and by his subsequent confession, was there to infiltrate them. Singh disclosed in this column Aug. 8 that he had spied on local Muslims for the FBI, which then betrayed him. “They woke up a little bit in every mosque and they had a little chat about it,” said Hamed Baig, president of the Islamic Center….. If Muslims are feeling betrayed, so is Singh, who has been in the Hardin County Jail for 14 months, with no end in sight. An immigration judge last February ordered him deported to India, where he has family, but the Indian government has yet to verify his citizenship and give him travel clearance. Singh says he was trying to get a felony expunged from his record and become a U.S. citizen, when he agreed to be a paid informant in search of radical Muslims plotting terrorism. He said he didn’t know what resulted from his reports to the FBI from various mosques, but that they led to some arrests. But clearly no Muslim terrorism plot in Des Moines was unearthed. The FBI doesn’t acknowledge the identity of informants and won’t confirm that Singh was on its payroll. It also says it makes no promises of citizenship. Singh got nothing in writing, but he and his wife insist the FBI agents who recruited him in 2003 promised to help him obtain citizenship and make the felony go away. [Des Moines Register]
NYPD built secret files on NJ, Long Island mosques
Feb 22: The Associated Press reported today that the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Demographics Unit conducted surveillance operations of Muslims in Newark and on Long Island, filming and listening in on conversations where they worship, at stores and restaurants they frequent, and at places where they work. However, when the mission was concluded, the NYPD put together a 60-page report about their operations — which uncovered no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior. The AP quoted the mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city as saying that the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it. In mid-2007, the NYPD's secretive Demographics Unit fanned out across Newark, photographing every mosque and eavesdropping in Muslim businesses. The findings were cataloged in a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, that served as a police guidebook to Newark's Muslims. There was no mention of terrorism or any criminal wrongdoing. The Associated Press report also said:
- Such surveillance has become common in New York City in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Nearly 3,000 Americans died when al-Qaida terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington and a field where one crashed in Pennsylvania.
- Police have built databases showing where Muslims live, where they buy groceries, what Internet cafes they use and where they watch sports. Dozens of mosques and student groups have been infiltrated, and police have built detailed profiles of local ethnic groups, from Moroccans to Egyptians to Albanians.
- But the NYPD's intelligence unit also operates far outside its jurisdiction and has worked to keep tabs on Muslims across the Northeast. The department has cataloged Muslim communities in Long Island, conducted undercover operations in New Brunswick, N.J., and has turned often innocuous Internet postings by Muslim student groups into police files.
- The monitoring of Muslim college students across the Northeast drew sharp rebukes from administrators at Yale, Columbia and elsewhere earlier this week. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued his most vigorous defense of his police department to date.
The documents obtained by the AP show, for the first time in any detail, how the NYPD's intelligence-gathering efforts stretched outside the department's jurisdiction. New Jersey and Long Island residents had no reason to suspect the NYPD was watching them. And the department is not accountable to their votes or tax dollars. NYPD conducted similar operations in Suffolk and Nassau counties on suburban Long Island, according to police records. The NYPD frequently operates outside its jurisdiction without telling federal or local officials. The effect of the program was that hundreds of American citizens were cataloged - sometimes by name, sometimes simply by their businesses and their ethnicity - in secret police files that spanned hundreds of pages. [AMP Report]
Suit filed over zoning denial for Islamic school
Feb 23: The Michigan Islamic Academy (M.I.A.) today filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Pittsfield Township, saying it violated federal law by denying a zoning change that would allow construction of a 360-student school. Officials of the school say it’s too big for its location in Ann Arbor. They bought land in Washtenaw County’s Pittsfield Township, but the township planning commission and board of trustees denied the rezoning. Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the township violated the First Amendment’s religious freedom clause, as well as the federal Religious Institutions Land Use Protection Act. “We have a history in metropolitan Detroit, over decades, where certain people didn’t want certain people to move into neighborhoods because they didn’t want African-Americans to move into an area, they didn’t want Jews moving into a certain area. And, I think it would set a dangerous precedent if a community is allowed to block construction of a school and an activity center based upon religion,” said Walid. Academy Vice President Tarek Nahlawi said the M.I.A. has made compromise after compromise, meeting and exceeding requirements. He added that the school did two traffic studies, approved by the Road Commission and accepted by the Planning Commission. “M.I.A. worked on things that exceeded the township requirements, we even offered to give up some public land for public use and still, that was not enough.” [CBS Detroit]
Forum discusses treatment of Latinos, Arabs at U.S.-Canada border
Feb 24: Immigrant advocates from across the U.S. are in Detroit for a two-day conference aimed at finding ways to stop what they say is a growing problem of federal agents profiling and harassing minorities near the U.S. border with Canada. "Latinos and Arab Americans are being stopped for no reason while they're walking down the street, waiting for a bus, or driving," said Ryan Bates, director for the Michigan branch of the Alliance for Immigrants Rights and Reform. Agents also are increasingly boarding public buses and trains to target Latinos and others, he said. The Northern Border Conference is looking at the issue of how minority groups are treated near the border. Much of the national attention on border issues deals with the southern border with Mexico, but advocates say they are seeing more targeting of minority groups near the border with Canada. Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, hopes to exchange ideas with other advocates. Last year, his group filed a complaint over profiling of Muslims at the U.S.-Canada border. "Racial and religious profiling does not make our country any safer," Walid said. Southwest Detroit -- the heart of metro Detroit's Mexican-American community -- is near the border with Canada, and some Latinos say they have been stopped more often and harassed by immigration agents. The department has stepped up its enforcement near borders to stop illegal immigration, but some say the crackdown is affecting legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens. Federal agents have increased power within 100 miles of the border with Canada to detain suspects, a power that critics say has been misused. Latino social services agencies say they have been targeted by Border Patrol agents. In addition, Muslims and Arab Americans say they've been detained and interrogated at border crossings for no legitimate reason. [Detroit Free Press]
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